A Miracle of Catfish (17 page)

Albert jerked his head again and she thought about her mother and daddy and how long they had been together. And was this thing with Albert forever? It made her afraid sometimes, to think that there might be a time when Albert wasn't around, if something happened, if they fell apart, if they stopped loving each other, if they got interested in other people. How did you know that a relationship was going to be forever? How did you know? What proof was there? How did love last through years? How had her mother and daddy made it this long? She'd wondered a lot of times if they even loved each other. They never had seemed to act like they did. Maybe things had been different between them before Raif died. Maybe when that happened, something had happened to them, too.

“I heard Bach had a big cock,” Albert said. He slid his chair closer and rested his head on Lucinda's shoulder. They sat there.

“I was just thinking about my folks,” Lucinda said, and took another sip of her drink. “They've been together so long. I don't know how they've made it this long.”

“They fucked like ducks,” Albert said gently, and sniffled again.

“I think mainly they just got used to each other,” she said. “They got married when Daddy was eighteen and they had Raif and then I didn't come along for ten more years. I only remember a little about him.”

Albert turned his head to look at somebody on the other side of the room and then turned back and said, “I saw Dick hit his prick with a brick.”

“Mother used to talk about him,” Lucinda said. “She'd talk about him more often if Daddy wasn't around. And Daddy wouldn't talk about him at all. He'd get mad if you asked him anything about Raif. He'd tell me to go ask my mother.”

Albert waved to somebody and Lucinda turned her head to see who it was. Some woman at the bar was smiling in their direction, then glanced at Lucinda and stopped smiling, just nodded and turned away. Albert fiddled with a loose straw, bending it, unbending it, bending it, unbending it, bending it, unbending it, bending it, unbending it.

“Who's that?” Lucinda said.

“Some chick I dick at a salt lick,” Albert said.

“How do you know her?” Lucinda said.

She'd found out a long time ago that you couldn't pay any attention to most of the stuff he said when he was showing his tics because his brain was just making it up. All this stuff he was saying, it was just junk. Just words that didn't really mean anything. She was used to it.

“Just some muff I'd like to stuff,” Albert said. “Some ho I'd like to blow.”

“Well, I'm just curious when some woman waves at you and I don't know her. Why don't you introduce me to her?”

Albert glanced over that way, then back.

“She fucks on a truck,” he said. He stopped swinging his foot and then he barked twice. “Can we flee?” he said.

“Sure, if you want to,” Lucinda said, even though most of her drink was still in the glass. “You pay the tab?”

Albert was nodding, starting to swing his foot again.

“I gave Earl a twirl.”

“Thank you,” Lucinda said. She picked up her drink and took one last sip, then set it back and pushed it away. She got her purse and stood up. “Okay,” she said. “I'm ready if you are.”

“I hope you scream when you cream,” Albert said. He was already up and waiting for her. She held out her hand.

“Come on. Hold my hand now.”

They started out through the middle of the tables and Lucinda saw the woman at the bar turn and look at them again. She was still smiling. She was beautiful, slim and black haired, Asian features, maybe some black blood, too. She looked like a movie star. Albert waved at her and they went out through the lobby and the revolving door and she handed their ticket to the valet for him to bring the car around. Lucinda had another quick smoke while he was getting it, standing on the other side of the covered entrance to the hotel, where the polished brass doors kept turning and letting people in and out. Albert was standing away from her, looking up at the sky, trying to see the stars, Lucinda guessed. That was one of the things you gave up when you moved to a city. It wasn't like living out in the country. You couldn't look up and see the stars any old time you wanted to.

There were four or five shiny new luxury cars already parked in front of the hotel and the rich people who drove them were coming out to get them a few at a time, and Lucinda watched them. The women were all as sleek as seals and the men wore expensive suits. Last year, during the PGA tour, people were supposed to have seen Tiger Woods in the hotel.

She stood there and smoked and paced in little steps. They had an agreement that Lucinda wouldn't smoke in the car, and it was twenty minutes home usually, so she was having a last smoke before the ride. But why couldn't he at least stand on this side of the driveway with her?

She could hear Albert barking and he was walking in little circles. Some of the valets were standing there watching him bark and walk. His head jerked out sharply again.

She saw the car coming around, up the ramp, and she stubbed her cigarette out, stepped over beside Albert, then started looking through her purse to see if she had some ones to give to the valet. When the car pulled up and stopped on the bricks in front, she saw that one of the brake lights was out, the right one. Fuck. It was a nice used Lexus and not over three years old. One more thing she'd have to take care of.

The valet got out of the car in his blue uniform and shut the car off, then got out, the chimes inside gently pinging. He was a very nice young black man named Lonzo and he knew Lucinda well enough to tease her and make her laugh. Albert headed around to get in the passenger seat and Lucinda walked over to Lonzo and handed him five folded ones.

“Don't buy PBR with all that, Lonzo,” she told him.

His face seemed to light up in the warm breeze that was blowing around the front of the hotel, making the limbs sway in the red-flowered alders that had been planted on the other side of the cobbled driveway. He stuck the money in his pocket and took Lucinda by the arm.

“You better let me help you get in, Miss Lucinda. Earn my pay.”

He played lead guitar in a band called Rudy and the Rockets, and she'd heard he was good. He'd been trying to get her to come out to one of the clubs where he played, but Lucinda was afraid to take Albert, so they never had gone. She hated to keep making up excuses.

“When you gonna come out and hear me play?” Lonzo said. “I done asked you about fifty times. Ain't never seen you sitting in the audience yet.”

“I don't know,” she said. “I've been wanting to. I just haven't gotten around to it.”

He tugged on her arm and started over to her car with her. Albert had already closed his door and was looking out the driver's window at them.

“Well, you better hurry up if you want to hear me in Atlanta,” he said. “Cause we fixing to cut us a record on the West Coast and rocket on out of here.”

She smiled and squeezed his arm with her hand.

“That's great, Lonzo. I'm really glad for you.”

“We out at the Motif next weekend if you want to come over,” Lonzo said. “I'll put you on the guest list if you'll tell me you coming.”

He reached for the door handle and pulled it open, and bowed slightly and swept his hand toward her seat. Albert was sitting there, looking straight ahead. Lucinda hesitated. She hated to just brush him off. He was too nice a person. You didn't just brush nice people off. It didn't matter if they were waiters or valets or whatever. They had a job, didn't they? They weren't slobs who went around on the sidewalks with their palms out, begging the public for money. They weren't bums.

“I'd sure like to, Lonzo. I don't know what we're doing next weekend yet. But thank you for asking me. And good luck.”

She got into the car and sat down and stashed her purse. She reached for her seat belt and harness and strapped herself in. Lonzo waited on her. He nodded when she started the car.

“Y'all have a good evening, now,” he said, and then he closed the door. He waved and stepped away. Lucinda pulled out, the car surging forward, she shifting gears quickly. She never choked it off at crucial times, like when she was pulling out into traffic, or trying to get started on a hill. She'd learned how to work a clutch on a John Deere tractor.

They drove about twenty feet and then had to stop on a small rise and wait on some people who were getting into a new black Tahoe. You saw a lot of new black Tahoes around the Ritz. Lots of white Jaguars, too.

The people who were blocking their way didn't look like they were in any big hurry to get out of it. Some of them had cups in their hands and they were drinking from them and laughing. A short guy in a golf shirt and slacks and loafers who looked a little drunk had the keys in his
hand and he was going around to the driver's side. Then a woman got out of the backseat on the other side and followed him around and they started talking. She was taller than him and wearing a flowered skirt and a sleeveless top and she had a drink and she was pointing up the street with it. Then he grabbed her by the ass and laughed. She shoved him playfully. He came back and acted like he was going to take a bite out of her, and she squealed with laughter and danced away.

“What the hell's going on?” Lucinda said. She had both hands on the wheel and then she reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror.

“Dipshits and nitwits with tits,” Albert said.

“I'm gonna blow the horn if they don't move in about two seconds,” Lucinda said. She would, too. She didn't have a whole lot of patience sometimes. She'd blow her horn so fast it would make your head swim.

The woman with the drink turned around and snatched at the car keys the guy was holding, but he jerked them out of her reach. Then a man in the backseat got out of the same door the woman had exited and walked behind the Tahoe. The lights of the Lexus were shining on his legs, but he didn't look at Albert and Lucinda when he walked in front of them. As soon as he got around to the other side of the Tahoe, the woman walked over to him and grabbed him by the sleeve, really stretching it out, and said something, and pointed to the guy with the keys, who had stopped his grab-assing and was opening the door and starting to get in.

“I think they're trying to keep him from driving,” Lucinda said.

Lucinda blew the horn. The woman and the man whose sleeve she'd grabbed turned and looked at Albert and Lucinda and said something to them that they couldn't hear with their windows rolled up. Lucinda thought the word
fuck
or some variation of it had probably been used.

“Drunk assholes,” Lucinda said.

“Fuck his duck with a puck,” Albert said.

The guy who was trying to get behind the wheel had gotten back out. He and the drunk woman and the man who'd gotten out of the backseat started waving for Albert and Lucinda to come around.

“I hate going out and seeing these … assholes,” Lucinda said.

Albert barked and jerked his head out at that odd angle again.

“Rich assholes … probably fucking Republicans,” Lucinda said.

Albert rubbed his chin and pulled at his ears and then put his finger inside his fist and started sliding it in and out.

“Think they own the goddamn world,” Lucinda said. “Maybe they'll move in a minute.”

But they didn't. They went back to arguing and pointing fingers in different directions, and now it looked like they were having an argument not about who was driving but where they were going, since they were pointing in all different directions. One of them even pointed up.

Lucinda blew the horn again and then got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The arguing people stopped arguing and they all looked at Albert and Lucinda again. Then the woman with the drink got a mean look in her eye and walked back to their Lexus.

“Don't roll the window down, honey,” Lucinda said. “You don't know these people.”

The woman with the drink stopped beside the car and rapped hard on Lucinda's window with a big diamond ring. It was so big that it was stunning. It winked and shot bits of light in all directions even in the semidark outside the car. Lucinda rolled the window down. The woman with the drink leaned down and bent toward the car. She stopped just short of sticking her head inside.

“What's the fucking problem, sister?” she said.

“We'd like to leave,” Lucinda said. “That's the problem.”

“Well, just go
around
,” the woman said, as if Lucinda were the stupidest person on earth.

“We can't go around,” Lucinda said. “You all have got the drive completely blocked.”

“Aw, we ain't got the damn drive blocked,” the woman said, and took another sip of her drink. It was in a clear plastic glass and there was a slice of lime floating around in it.

Lucinda was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. Then she blew the horn again. Long and loud. Lucinda looked toward the front door of the hotel and could see Lonzo and some of the other valets looking their way. But none of them had walked over yet. They were probably going to keep their noses out of it unless some shit happened.

The woman did put her head inside the car then. She brought her
face close to Lucinda's and said, “Why don't you stop blowing that fucking horn?”

“Why don't you make me?” Lucinda said. Then she blew it again. And again. The valets out front were still staring at them.

“Tell them to move the fucking car, lady,” Lucinda said.

The woman turned her head to yell at the men, who'd said something.

“What?” she said. “Why don't you let me handle this? I'm quite capable of handling it, okay, Harold?”

“Okay,” Lucinda said. “Handle it then.”

Then she tried to reason with her. Just as a last resort. Just to try and be reasonable herself.